As the Crow Falls | ✔

Chapter Twenty-Five

Niccola had no idea how long they stayed like that. Isaiah's energy eventually gave out, but he didn't move until Niccola rubbed his back to break the stillness between them.

"Bedtime?" she murmured.

He nodded. Niccola helped him to his feet, then found and dug his nightclothes from the rumpled covers of the bed so he wouldn't have to search for them. He murmured thanks. Niccola retreated to the opposite side of the room and turned her back so they could both change. Well, not really "change" on her part. She'd brought no other clothing with her. She kicked off her shoes with little ceremony, and stripped down to the soft undershirt and pants she wore beneath her dress. She and Phoebe had always donned layers, particularly when climbing trees or rookery ladders, or running wild in the streets. Many women in Varna wore pants alone, but Niccola had always preferred the best of both worlds.

Isaiah didn't seem any more bothered by changing or sleeping in the same room than she did, unless that was an apathy born of sheer exhaustion. The changing part at least made sense. He couldn't see her, and even if he could, she suspected he would be no more drawn to look indecently than she was.

"I'm done," said Isaiah behind her.

Niccola turned with a frown. "How—"

"You kicked your shoes against the wall." He smiled, weak but genuine. "Also, we've established that we are the same person on this."

So he'd have turned his back, too. The mutual respect of privacy went a long way to lifting the strangeness of the next discussion they had to have.

Isaiah made little ceremony of it, glancing down at the bed he was sitting on. "Which side do you want?"

"Do you have a preference?"

"Usually the back."

Unsurprising, given who may arrive to wake him on any given morning. The Calisian palace had serving staff, but a personal servant for the prince was conspicuously not among them.

"I should be ready to hide again if I have to anyway," said Niccola.

Isaiah said nothing. He snapped his fingers for Pekea, then rolled to the back of the bed and burrowed about as far under the covers as he could get without suffocating. Niccola moved about the room in a nighttime pattern somehow both familiar and foreign. The lamp, washstand, and washbasin were all far more like hers from back home than in the Bel Ilan manor, yet the fact that they were not hers somehow emphasized their foreignness. It was just as well that she couldn't see much as she finally blew out the lamp, padded to the bed, and slipped under the bedcovers. She nearly groaned at the comfort of them. She'd forgotten what a proper mattress and duvet felt like.

Isaiah was still shivering. Chilled, or in shock, or both. And the blankets weren't warm yet.

They weren't this close yet. Were they?

It would be inappropriate. She could find another blanket instead, though she had no idea where they were stored, or if Isaiah even had spares. In a room with only one chair by his parents' mandate, that seemed unlikely. She would also have to leave the warmth of the covers in her now-bare feet, and she'd tossed her socks off somewhere in the darkness, and they would take time and effort to find.

And hadn't she been hugging Isaiah a moment ago? She'd offered, and he'd taken it, and stayed much longer than he strictly needed to. Leaned into it like he was starved for touch. That was as good an indication as any that she could offer it again, unless sharing a bed was already too much of an intrusion, in which case she didn't want to risk pushing boundaries. Bad enough that they were locked in here together. That she would have to escape come morning.